Robin and Linda Williams Biography Robin and Linda Williams make their home in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, in an old frame house, built around a log cabin, in the country outside Staunton. They tour widely around the country for much of the year. Linda is a native of Anniston, Alabama and Robin was born n Charlotte, NC, the son of a Presbyterian minister. They met in June, 1971, in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where her parents and Robin, a full-time musician on the coffeehouse circuit, was visiting his. Linda taught school another year and they started performing together in 1973, touring in a Volkswagen Beetle. Their first album came out in 1975 through connections they made sleeping on the floors of friends' apartments in the Minneapolis folk music scene. The same year, they made their first appearance on the "A Prairie Home Companion" radio show and traded in their trusty Beetle on a reconditioned Volkswagen van. Not, in retrospect a good move. A series of critically acclaimed albums came over the next decade made up mostly of original material with some traditional songs. During this time other performers noticed their songwriting. Most notable, Emmylou Harris, Tom T. Hall, George Hamilton, IV, Tim and Mollie O'Brien, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Kathy Mattea, The Seldom Scene, and Garnet Rogers have sung and recorded their songs. Also, during this time, the Volkswagen van died and was replaced by a brand new Chevy van outfitted with a beanbag chair for the back seat. In 1989 they recorded "All Broken Hearts Are The Same," their debut CD for Sugar Hill Records. Somewhere around this time they began touring with a band (Their Fine Group) and by 1993 had purchased a small band bus that enabled them to keep up on a cross-country tour with Mary Chapin Carpenter. In 1996, their "Sugar for Sugar" CD spent 13 weeks on the Americana Top Ten chart. Their next two CD's, "Devil of a Dream" and "In the Company of Strangers," did even better. The bus and the band kept them busy touring in support of these releases. Robin and Linda Williams biography, (p2.) They have continued to perform regularly on "A Prairie Home Companion" throughout their career, and helped form The Hopeful Gospel Quartet with the host, Garrison Keillor, in the late 1980's. The quartet has toured in the US, Europe, and the British Isles and has released two CDs. They have won numerous music awards and have appeared on "The Grand Ole Opry," "Austin City Limits," "Mountain Stage," and "Music City Tonight" and have owned numerous vehicles. THEIR FINE GROUP has included, since its inception, Jim Watson on bass, vocals, and mandolin. Jim's musical history includes a fourteen-year stint with the Red Clay Ramblers of which he was a founding member. The trio turns into a quartet with the addition of one of several fine musicians. Most prevalent is Jimmy Gaudreau on mandolin. Jimmy is a bluegrass veteran of 32 years, and has played with The Country Gentlemen, J.D. Crowe, The Tony Rice Unit, Chesapeake and Aldridge, Bennett and Gaudreau. Fine Group veteran, Kevin Maul, occasionally returns with his dobro, and longtime musical companion from Minneapolis, Peter Ostroushko, brings his fiddle and mandolin to the group on selected mid-western dates. "Visions of Love," their latest and ninth release on the Sugar Hill label, was produced by Garrison Keillor. It garnered a three star review in USA Today upon its release and has continued to gather steam with critical praise nationwide. Alanna Nash, in a review for Amazon.com called it "their most engaging CD to date." Featuring sparse production that showcases Robin and Linda's singing, the CD spent several months on the Americana chart and also topped the folk and bluegrass charts for Roots Music Reports. http://robinandlinda.com/bio.